A lot of beginning web developers build their first website on a content management platform like WordPress. WordPress is easy to use, very affordable (or even free in some cases) and comes with a huge range of add-ons and plugins to improve your new site.

However, there are still a lot of things that can go wrong with WordPress websites, as many novice developers have found out. If you want to build a decent, functioning website, then you need to make sure that you avoid the following common mistakes that inexperienced WordPress users often make:

Not backing your site up

Backing up your website is absolutely essential, especially if you’re using a cheap hosting provider. Basically, backing up your website involves creating a copy of all your site’s content, including written content, images, videos and more. This can be done with various plugins or through dedicated website backup platforms. Many hosting providers also offer back-ups.

Using too many plugins

Although plugins can be extremely useful, and will make your life as an inexperienced web developer extremely easy, they can also slow your website down dramatically. It’s important to make sure that you only use plugins which are useful and which actually offer measurable benefits for your website.

When it comes to online marketing for lawyers and law firms, social media is one of your most powerful tools. If you own, run, or simply manage the marketing for a law firm, you need to be aware of social media best practices.

One of the most important things when it comes to social media marketing is gaining followers. The more followers you have, the more people who will see your content, and the more exposure you will have. However, getting more followers can be difficult at the best of times.

This is why we’ve put together a list of our top 6 ways to get more social media followers for your law firm. What are you waiting for – get started now!

Post Content That’s Relevant

If you’re serious about getting as many people following your law firm’s social media pages as possible, then you need to think carefully about the type of content you post. Make sure that it’s relevant, that it’s interesting, and that it encourages people to react or engage with you.

Think Carefully About How You Engage With People

The key to social media success is presenting yourself in a way that draws people in. Instead of being a boring old law firm page, show people the human behind the page. Sympathise with their problems, answer their questions, and do your best to help people wherever you can.

Run A Competition

Social media competitions and giveaways are great ways to increase the number of followers you have. A popular way to gain followers is to offer the chance of winning a prize to people who like and share your page (on Facebook) or Retweet (on Twitter). This will dramatically increase your exposure, and should result in more followers.

Millions of words have been written about Google’s search engine and how SEO can get you to the top of the first page. Often it is a much harder than you are led to believe and in a lot of cases virtually impossible. Thankfully, here is another way to get your website on the first page of Google’s search results and that is by using Adwords marketing.

Adwords is Google’s paid advertising platform and it is paying advertisers whose results you’ll often see at the top and on the right-hand side of the search results. Please note when you use Adwords and even though you are paying Google, there is still no guarantee you will be on the first or even the second page. To achieve this, and to get the best return on your investment. there are some simple rules you should follow when using Adwords marketing.

Before you do anything, you should first learn as much about Adwords as you can by reading the information Google provides about how it works. This is especially important as it will ensure you don’t fall foul of any of Google’s policies, which could result in your account being banned.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is an essential part of any successful website. Without undertaking some specific actions to optimise your site for search engine crawler bots, there is very little chance of you appearing highly in search engine rankings. This means that you will receive very little organic traffic to your site, and you may find it difficult to obtain a decent audience.

However, if you ask SEO guru Peter Brittain, it is important to note that SEO best practices change regularly as different search engines update their ranking algorithms. It is therefore essential to perform regular maintenance to make sure that you continue to rank highly for your targeted keywords, especially if you depend on high volumes of organic traffic for your business to succeed.

Below are some of our top tips for staying up to date with the latest SEO best practices, each of which should help you keep at the top of your SEO game.

Follow Some High Authority Blogs:

High authority SEO blogs are usually a good place to get the most up to date and correct information about SEO best practices. Find website which has good reputation, which appears to update their SEO information regularly, and which has a consistent high readership.

If you are a web designer, there’s a chance that you have heard quite a few design myths over and over again. Whether it is from your friends, your parents, or the clients you work with, there are plenty of myths to go around. Sometimes designers will even agree with them! Note that this doesn’t always make it true.

Let’s debunk a few of these myths and get the better answers:

Myth: Design is an Artform Not really. Design is design and there isn’t much else do it. by Professor Nigel Cross in his book, Designerly ways of knowing, as he defined design as the following: “Everything we have around us has been designed. Design ability is, in fact, one of the three fundamental dimensions of human intelligence. Design, science, and art form an ‘AND’ not an ‘OR’ relationship to create the incredible human cognitive ability.”

This means that you can’t really define what design is, which also means that you can only use the world “design” to define it.

Myth: Design is all in the Tools When you design, you use tools. This means that most people think that all you have to do is learn how to master the tools and you will be able to be a designer. This isn’t really the case. You have to learn how to think and feel like a designer and then actually do the work. There are certain parts of design that you just can’t “learn” your way through if you want to be truly great.

That doesn’t mean that people can’t become designers or grow in their skills.

Even the most amateur website designer should be familiar with simple on page SEO practices such as keyword density, keyword placement, and the use of html formatting. However, many people aren’t aware of the fact that the things that they do elsewhere on the web can also influence their search engine ranking.

If you aren’t using off page SEO practices yet, then you need to seriously think about what you are doing. You will usually be able to dramatically increase your websites ranking through a few simple actions, including:

Build a good reputation:

If you have a good reputation, people will be more likely to talk positively about you and your website in other places on the internet. Believe it or not, search engine crawler bots collect data from places like reviews sites and forums to determine the perceived value of your website to your viewers. Building a good reputation can help you get decent reviews and an enhance the offline and online visibility of your website. This is especially important if you are selling a product or a service, as a poor reputation will effectively cripple you.

The modern world has become dominated by technology and technological advancements. At the same time, the business world is becoming more and more competitive. The rise of a global market means that small local businesses can have their market dominated by overseas companies and corporations.

This means that effective marketing is extremely important if you want to have a successful business. You have to show people why they should use your services or buy your products, and why you are better than your competitors. Digital marketing is a great way to do this.

What is digital marketing?

Basically, digital marketing is any sort of marketing which involves the use of a digital medium. Any kind of marketing which uses the internet is automatically defined as digital marketing, but the definition can also be expanded to include things like radio and tv advertising.

Starting an eCommerce business can be exciting and in the long term, very rewarding financially if it is setup correctly. If not, it can become a costly nightmare which is why it makes sense to employ an internet business consultant when starting your eCommerce business.

The first thing they will be able to advise you on is which platform to use for your online store. For example, if you want to start with one or two private label products they are most likely going to recommend Amazon. If you want to have a much bigger range of products, then Shopify is an option. Beyond these two there are several other excellent eCommerce platforms that could be more suited to your business and this is why a consultant’s advice is important so that you get this right from the outset.

The alternative is that you plough ahead and pick an eCommerce platform only to discover several months down the road that it is unsuitable for you and by that time you will have invested a lot of time and money that will have been wasted unnecessarily.

The next way that an internet business consultant can help you is in relation to choosing products and sourcing them. You may know what sorts of products you want to sell, or it could be that you want to target a specific niche but aren’t sure yet what products your store will have for sale.

One of the biggest challenges for any website owner using the Joomla CMS platform who wants to increase the number of visitors to their site is improving that website’s ranking within the search engines. There are several ways to do this but one of the most effective is with the use of search engine optimisation or SEO as it is commonly referred to.

There are many SEO activities which can be done externally to the website such as increasing the number of backlinks to the site, but there are also several which need to be undertaken within the site itself. To improve the effectiveness of this on Joomla websites the use of an SEO extension or plugin is recommended. There are dozens of these to choose from but here are 5 that have proven to work very well.

JoomSEF: The ‘SEF’ in JoomSEF stands for ‘Search Engine Friendly’ which is what this extension will do for your website’s URLs. It basically rewrites them so that they are more easily recognised by the search engines and more understandable by individuals when they see the URL. JoomSEF optimises your website’s metadata including its metatags, handles redirects such as 301 and also connects your site with Google analytics.

No matter how big or small your business currently is, or if you are only just starting a business, the importance of having a respected and powerful brand is crucial. You could try to do this yourself, but as with many functions within your business, the wisest way to develop your brand is by enlisting the help of a digital agency.

Not only will a digital marketing agency have the resources in terms of skilled marketers and branding experts, their experience of working with other businesses is a massive advantage to you. Their experience allows them to take what they have learned working for previous clients and implement it when working for you, which includes avoiding any branding mistakes that may have happened in the past.

To employ the services of a digital marketing agency you must first ensure that their credentials and track record are congruent with the standards you would expect. Remember that their task is to position your company and its brand in the best possible light, so the last thing you want is for the agency who are doing that for you, to have a less than stellar reputation themselves.

As a business owner, you should be aware that good web design is essential for your business whether it sells physical products or services. Your website is the storefront to an audience of thousands of potential customers and just like any brick and mortar store it must look professional and welcoming.

Excellent web design is about more than just making the home page look appealing, and if you want your website to be effective then planning its design and functionality is essential. There are three main web design factors to consider.

#1 What purpose does your website serve?

This crucial question is what poorly designed websites completely fail to answer. Knowing the main purpose of your website in advance and ensuring the design and functionality of the site match that purpose, will give you a huge advantage over your competitors. Some questions and possible answers to consider prior to designing your website:

Is it a corporate site? Should be visual with easily recognisable company branding and colours.

A Content site to provide information? Text must be easy to read, with simple navigation.

Single product sales page? Easy to skim, with focus on fonts and colours.

Is it an e-commerce site? Requires a shopping cart and an easily navigated product catalogue.

Starting your own website can seem like a great idea. The potential to make a passive income is huge – but only if you do things right. You might think that you have a great idea for a website which will fill an internet gap that other sites simply haven’t taken yet.

Unfortunately for you, the great idea is only the beginning. Building a great website doesn’t happen overnight, and there is a lot of work to do before you can even start adding content to your site. One of the first things that you need to do is choose a web hosting provider.

What is web hosting?

Every single website is made up of some network of code framework which needs to be stored in an easily accessible location. The chances are that – unless you somehow have your own hosting system – you will have to use an external server to host your business.

These servers give you everything that you need to run your own website. They provide things like storage space for your code, files, and any other data that you have. They provide the computing power to keep your website up and running 24/7, and they often even provide tech support and things like that to help you when you get stuck.

If you have been researching SEO for any length of time in the hope of boosting your company website’s search engine ranking you may have come across the terms ‘White Hat‘ and ‘Black Hat’. These are terms which identify SEO techniques, and strategies at either end of the scale when it comes to whether the search engines, and in particular Google, approve of them.

With white hat SEO, all the actions which you or your SEO consultant take will be those which Google, and in turn the other search engine companies, accept are legitimate ways to try to help your website’s ranking. These actions include:

Using an exact match domain or sub-domains

Publishing keyword optimized content

Setting up meta data correctly such as the page title and description

Posting content on other sites with links back to your site

Gaining backlinks from high ranked websites in your niche or industry

For one or two of these, some purists might claim they are ‘grey hat‘ but none of these will be seen by Google as trying to game the system. In truth, Google wants webmasters to use these techniques as it helps them identify what your website is about.

Search engine optimisation, or SEO, carries with it a mystique that many business owners believe belongs to some type of secret society. Others believe that website sites get ranked highly in search engine results using a combination of voodoo or Harry Potter magic.

In fact, SEO is not magic and is in fact based on algorithms which rely more on programming and logic than they do on any kind of wizardry. The reality is, rather than everything being kept a secret, Google and the other search engines publish lots of updates and advice that tell the online world what they are looking for when it comes to ranking websites.

For the search engines, their number one priority is to make the results they produce when someone enters a search term the most relevant they can. This is achieved by special programs called ‘bots’ visiting every website that exists, to establish what that site is about. To help this process search engines tell businesses, web designers, and SEO consultants what will help optimise a site in terms of its relevance to a search term.

There are two categories of optimisation which can be undertaken and these are ‘on-page optimisation’ and ‘off-page optimisation’. On-page refers to all the actions and optimisation you can perform within your website, and off-page are the actions which occur on other websites throughout the internet.

If you speak to several business people about branding many of them will tell you ‘We’re too small to think about branding ourselves’, or ‘It’s just fancy marketing’ or worst of all ‘Branding won’t help us sell more’. The sad fact is that people who think like this are preventing their businesses from reaching their full potential.

Effective branding doesn’t need to cost a fortune and the return on anything invested in branding your company properly will be enormous. Here are five ways effective branding can bring significant benefits in terms of customers and profits.

Customer Loyalty: If your customers have received an excellent buying experience, including a quality product or service, they are more likely to give you repeat business if your branding is memorable. They’ll feel an affinity with your brand if it is easily identifiable and are thus prone to purchasing again. Even better they’ll more readily recommend your products or services to other potential customers.

Memorable Identity: How many times have you had someone try to recommend a business to you and then struggle to remember the company’s name? Now, think of the all the hard work that’s gone into getting that person to become a customer in the first place and you’ll agree it’s a crime they have gone away without the brand being etched on their mind. Good branding will ensure anyone who encounters your business will remember its name, and share it with others.

Entering the internet as a content producer rather than a consumer can be a daunting prospect. However, the opportunities are vast, and are really only limited by your imagination. There is money to be made if you approach things in a professional and innovative manner.

Most people who make money on the internet use a website of some form. There is a lot of work involved in building your first website, including things like choosing a domain name, finding a web hosting provider to meet your needs, and creating your content.

Choosing a domain name:

Your domain name, or website address, will come to define your website. It will often be the first thing that people notice when they visit your website, and it needs to be simple, memorable, and related to the topic of your site.

Avoid choosing a domain name which is hard to remember or spelled in a weird way. A lot of people will come to your site by typing your website address into their browser, and strange addresses can prevent them from ever reaching your site. This can reduce traffic numbers and detract from your website’s effectiveness.

One of the biggest phenomena that the internet has created is social media. Its use and influence are so widespread amongst the world’s online population that any business which wants to build its customer base and increase profits needs to ensure it has an effective social media marketing strategy in place.

Social media is a bit of a catch-all term for several sites and applications even though many people think it just refers to Facebook and Twitter. In reality, social media consists not only of these two but also sites like Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, SnapChat and many others that are too numerous to mention in a single article. Blogging can also be placed under the social media banner too.

Social media is essentially a means to interact with others on the internet and primarily is the sharing of information. This is done using text, images, audio, and video. The information shared can be as simple as a 140-character text message or at the other end of the scale a feature length video.

Where social media marketing can help you to build your business is by using the platforms that people send each other personal messages and information, to send similar messages about your business.

Getting backlinks to your website is one of the most basic actions needed to improve the SEO of your website. In the past, the measure was purely how many backlinks you had so webmasters would obtain thousands of backlinks that were nothing more than spam.

Google got wise to this so now the amount of links you have going to your website is not as big a ranking factor as the quality of those links. Nowadays, if you have two identical sites, the one having a thousand backlinks from insignificant sites will be outranked by a site with maybe only 50 links, but with those links all being of high quality.

There is no single element of a backlink that determines whether it is considered by Google to be any stronger a link than another. Instead, it is the accumulation of all the traits that a backlink has that will establish its power.

So, let’s look at some of these factors and whether you can influence them or not.

Logos are everywhere. Global corporations have them. Medium sized companies have them. Small businesses have them. Logos help with branding and marketing a company as well as creating an easily recognisable identity.

But simply having a logo isn’t enough, especially if it is poorly designed and has no impact when seen. It must be designed and created so that it is effective in promoting your brand in all manner of ways and mediums.

The first step in designing an effective logo has nothing to do with graphics or text. It is research, both internal and external. Identify what you want your company branding to convey, and what its mission is all about. Also, think about the sort of customers you are targeting and what appeals to them.

Externally, look at what is working well, both within your industry, and within others for potential ideas. Never copy another company’s logo, but by all means ask your designer to adapt design elements of other logos that have proved to be successful.

Having spent time, money or both attracting visitors to your website the last thing you want to happen is for them to click away almost immediately because of poor web design. This can be avoided by ensuring some basic web design elements are implemented when building or updating your business website.

Firstly, you want to ensure when anyone clicks through to your website, that it loads in their browser quickly. Nothing makes visitors click away faster than having to wait for more than a couple of seconds for the page to load. To help loads times media elements such as video and images should not be overused when designing your website and their file sizes should be minimised where possible.

Another way to quicken your site’s loading time is to avoid the use of scripting languages which create visual effects. Some scripts are not compatible with certain web browsers and are even prone to crashing, which is something you definitely don’t want to happen to your visitors.

The internet has given the world many benefits and one of the most significant is to make it easier for anyone wanting to start their own eCommerce business to do so.

Just 30 years ago, if you wanted to start a business selling physical products your only option was to acquire premises, purchase stock, pay for advertising, employ staff, and then open the doors hoping to turn a profit. Often this could take months or even years to achieve. Unfortunately, in many cases the returns proved insufficient to cover the large outlay already invested and the business folded.

With eCommerce today, the risks and upfront investment required are minimal compared to what was previously required and incredibly the time taken to get started can be as little as 24 hours.

Firstly, there is no need for premises or at least physical ones. With eCommerce, your store is hosted online on platforms that cost just a few dollars per month. Some of these even offer free trials when you start so your first month costs you nothing.

Platforms such as Shopify and WooCommerce are more than just places to host your business. They give you a range of functions and applications which help you to run, organise and analyse your eCommerce business from day one.

Since entrepreneurs first started selling their products and services on the internet, numerous marketing methods and tools have come and gone. Today there is one strategy used by online businesses which continues to be highly effective and that is email marketing.

The benefits of email marketing are such that many business gurus say it should be essential for all businesses and if your business does not use email as part of its marketing armoury then it is greatly disadvantaged compared to those competitors who do.

The first benefit of email marketing is that it’s very cost effective compared to most other forms of promotion. Other than a monthly fee to your email service provider there is normally nothing else to pay, even if you send out emails every single day. Compared to media advertising, social media marketing, or mail shots, the cost of email marketing is a fraction of the cost in comparison.

Hackers are a website owners worst nightmare. They can steal personal and sensitive data and can destroy the reputation of a business or website overnight. If your website security isn’t top of the range, then you are exposing yourself to attack.

Hackers can steal things like customers’ credit card details, email addresses, and log in details. They will stop at nothing if they sense a breach in your website’s security. Choosing a good web hosting provider is often a good first step when it comes to keeping your website free from hackers. However, it usually isn’t enough on its own.

Some other things that you can do to keep hackers at bay include:

Make sure that you are using an up-to-date anti-virus software:

Hackers will often plant viruses on your computer in an attempt to gain access to your personal information. This information may include things like usernames and passwords – information which will allow the hacker (or anyone they pass it on to) to gain access to your website.